Darwaish

Last week, while surfing though flickr, I came across a wonderful collection of mostly black & white photos by Dr. Ghulam Nabi Kazi. His collection has a major section Plain Mr. Jinnah dedicated to Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s rare photographs and some of his personal letters that not many people have ever read. Dr. Kazi is doing a great service by preserving all those historic photographs and letters for us and uploading them on flickr for public viewing. The one that I found most interesting, and which made me write this post, was the last letter written by Ruttenbai “Ruttie” Petit to her husband “J”, as she used to call him. Ruttie was given an Islamic name Mariam when she converted to Islam and married Jinnah in 1918. Ruttie originally wrote this letter in Paris on October 5, 1928 but re-wrote it in Marseilles and posted it from there. The letter is beautifully written and gives you some idea of marriage and personal life of Jinnah. For ATP reader’s interest, a typed text of the letter has also been included in this post.

Darwaish

In a dramatic development today, former prime minister and exiled PML(N) leader Nawaz Sharif has been deported to Saudi Arabia. Sharif, who announced his return to Pakistan earlier this month after seven years of exile, was sent back to Saudi Arabia just few hours after his arrival in Pakistan.

He spent around 4 hours at airport, negotiating with Saudi and Pakistani officials. Deportation was certainly one of the options that Government of Pakistan had but not many analysts believed that they would actually go ahead with it. Till the last minute, it appeared from electronic media coverage of the event that Nawaz Sharif will be arrested and jailed and even the arrest warrants were produced and charges were handed over to Nawaz Sharif. We saw visuals of his arrest in which he was man-handled by police officials. But then we heard in a dramatic manner that he is being sent back to Saudi Arabia in a special PIA flight. Now we will see another legal battle if this action is a contempt of Supreme Court of Pakistan’s verdict on Nawaz Sharif’s return in August.

Syed Ahsan Ali

What did you say?..No Mohammad Yousuf (a stunning move). No Abdur Razzak (an amazingly amazing decision) and no Shoaib Akhtar (a blessing in disguise?). That means, no real chance of creating history in first ever T20 Championship for Pakistan squad. But hold on for a moment. Haven’t you heard that life is wonderful because it is uncertain? Well, so is Pakistan cricket. They are as talented as to be able to beat the best in the business and can be as miserable as to be left clueless against minnows like Ireland.